Reality is relative.

This downward spiral of self-loathing comes on quick and takes all of my coping skills with it. I sleep in 6 hour blocks, three times a day. My ability to care for myself or remember things is becoming lost in the blackness. The bittersweet blackness of this depressing hole we live in when we realize our whole existence is a piss filled oubliette. I cannot escape.

The sleeping thing...that's probably an attempt to escape, but I remember my DBT training. I did this. Live now. Watch your problems, emotions, issues fall from the gnarled oak tree like leaves into the shallow, babbling brook--clear as day--and realize that this whole mindfulness thing is bull. My problems aren't leaves that just float away and I can't concentrate on the now if they are tugging at my heartstrings. Oh, head! Let me be!

I should start at the beginning, but the story would be too long. You would become bored. So we can start with what's bugging me and branch out.

I failed out of school. Not because I'm not smart enough, but because I cannot muster up the dedication/remember to meet deadlines. I love school. Every little bit about it makes me joyous. This is a fact. I just wish I could have some sort of self-paced program where I could work when I'm furiously manic and take off a week or three while I knead my hands in the shower trying to wash myself pure. My math professor was very understanding, but the administration was not. Oh well. Time to start that clarinet/bass group I never dreamed about. I don't know if I will try school again. If you fail out of several school/drop out unexpectedly, but still take the fin aid, they frown on that. I have a myriad of schools left to choose from, but all are expensive out-of-staters. I can't justify hurting my credit score anymore. I thought I was committed. I know I want this, but I just can't do it anymore. Maybe not right now. I used to be so smart. So focused. Maybe it was the Lithium that killed me. Maybe I was never alive in the first place. Sleepwalking through our conversation.

Reality is relative.

I need to be 138 pounds. Or 10 stone. I've decided I prefer the stone system as it makes me feel thin. I have made myself vomit regularly in years. I feel it coming on again as I count out calories and carrots. I feel it coming on as I buy boxes of generic chocolate laxatives and demand a colace refill. In my defense, I am terribly constipated from the lamotrigine, but I always have been. I do not have any energy. If I had energy, maybe I could forget that my *** is huge/I hate myself/I am not good enough for anyone.

Negative self-talk never helped anyone. I know this.

I'm not drinking. I used to coddle my alcohol and swaddle it until everyone loved me. No one loved me then either. They loved the lunatic that laid claim to my body. I do not know what it is like to NOT be on medication anymore. Last year, I went off for six months. I do not remember a single day I didn't spend staring out the blinds waiting for life to come get me. I do not remember a single day anyways. It's all mush. I do not know what happened to my memory. The other day I had a CT...I remember the barium swallow because I took a picture of the bottle. I remember talking to the ladies next to me. I do not remember being called or going in or even having the CT. The results were negative. I remember being frustrated and disappointed. WHY CAN'T SOMETHING BE WRONG WITH ME SO THEY CAN FIX IT? I'm dying for my illness to be a product of a mass in my body or an irregularity that someone can carve out and I can be new. Oh, wash me like I was new, hold me in your arms, and forget that I ever was who I might never remember I have been.

I do not know you at all. One of my downfalls is my inability to get close to people. Anytime I get close to anyone, I either screw them or they screw me. Pick any definition of the word and you will be in the right.

I am currently in a committed relationship that will be in first anniversary status in exactly a month's time and I love him, I do. He knows more about me than anyone. He has held me through my great griefs. He has stood besides me during my great failures. He wants to have a life together. He doesn't believe in forever, but in my experience, reality is relative -- I think the average human being is limited to thinking time in finite. I do not believe in time. I do not have to though.

I haven't worked since late 2009. I've been hospitalized several times, then, I just gave up. I went back to school because I was going to be someone, then, I just couldn't handle the stress. So I cut down to two classes, online, and still I could not hold on to my sanity.

I did what I was supposed to do. I took my pills. I tried all of them. Nearly a literal statement of fact. Traded doctors, traded diagnoses, went through more than a decade of therapy including a full course of DBT. I bought all the therapy workbooks. Anxiety, grief, DBT, CBT, the like. Self help...the real opiate of the masses. Why am I still here stuck in this corner? I just want to see the world...Somehow, I've got to think that it's me. I am hurting myself and I do not know how to stop.

Is this what we become? Is this remission? When do I get my head back?

I've been manic most of my life. I probably do not even know what it feels like to be alive.

I just want to breathe. I see the doctor above me telling me to breathe with the mask over my face...the lights. I'm just waiting for it to get dark.